JPF Home Page Forums Stop The Bailout

Joe,

That's just the cost of living out there. And people will pay 850K for a 150K house. Our house doesn't cost much more than yours, but a similar house in LA costs over 2.5 million dollars (we have a friend who appraised it for LA). Our house is nice, but not even average for our area (the houses a few blocks away cost 2-3 times more). He was looking at similar houses to ours and all of them cost 2-3 million or more. I told him to just move back to Indiana and he could live like a king for a fraction of that. He said he wants to stay in LA. So he bought a house in that price range. I think he's nuts. But people don't want to leave LA. I understand to a point. It's almost ALWAYS a nice day out there (minus the smog). It never seems to be as brutally hot and humid as Florida can get. But I have no idea how anyone with a REAL job (like your brother for example) can possibly afford to live out there. It's insane. Most of the time people are renting and the owners have multiple properties. And THOSE people are the ones getting bailed out I fear. In Chicago they stopped evicting people because they learned that while many home owners were in default, the renters they had were all paid up and had no idea what was going on. They were coming in and removing their stuff out to the curb while these honest renters were at work. It was such a problem they stopped evicting until the banks had confirmed that the person with the default loan was actually living in the house. THOSE are REAL victims in all of this.. not the landlords and not the people who voluntarily choose to spend 2 million on a 250K house.

Brian